High School Students Force Michele Bachmann To Rest Her Case

Is Michele Bachmann still a thing? I haven’t been keeping up with the email newsletter so I’m not actually sure if she’s a thing still. In any case, at a recent Michele Bachmann town hall meeting (which kind of seems like an insult to the term “town hall meetings” to even call it that, but OK) at the Waverly Pizza Ranch (which OK, now THAT is a good name for a restaurant because a ranch for pizza? Where pizzas are allowed to roam free across the open plains? As pizzas should? Good name), she opened the floor to questions, so she does at least understand what a town hall meeting is, at which point some local high school students from the LGBT community confronted her on her gay rights positions. (And then also on prayer in school, but that’s less EXCITING.) Good for them! Most people in high school are way too busy checking and rechecking the value of their Beanie Babies in the bi-annual Collector’s Price Guide to bother engaging face-to-face with a politician running for President of the United States. (I understand what kids are into.) The problem, of course, with confronting Michele Bachmann head-on for her aggressively bigoted political views is that then you just have to sit there and listen to the shit that comes out of her mouth.

Oh brother. Where to even begin? Arguing that gay people have the same rights as everyone else is obviously insane, but to use as an example the fact that they are allowed to marry people of the opposite sex just like everyone else is straight up comical. The only reason that child doesn’t laugh in Michele Bachmann’s face, I’m assuming, is because she’s so disgusted by Bachmann’s condescending nursery rhyme tone. Yuck. You can’t use that tone while simultaneously spouting off such logically fallacious and morally bankrupt garbage. Also, her fundamental argument, that we are all equal citizens under the law and that we all enjoy the same laws and that there shouldn’t be special laws for people just because they aren’t heteronormative (my word, not hers, obviously) white people is just, I mean, good God, woman. Why even bother saying things like that? Why not just say that you hate fags, which you do? The people in this nightmare room (excuse me, nightmare Pizza Ranch) would probably still applaud you.

Which, yikes, guys? With the applause? It totally makes sense that you are there because you support Michele Bachmann, and that is one of your equal rights that we ALL enjoy, but maybe hold your applause while she blindly loses an argument with a 16-year-old. Then, of course, there’s the part where Michele Bachmann says that muslim students are allowed to pray in public schools while Christian students are not. Haha. BANG YOUR GAVEL! REST YOUR CASE, QUICK! I’m not even going to bother looking that up on Snopes because I know it’s a racist lie. Not that it’s a surprise coming from her. The only surprise is that she didn’t bring up the War on Christmas as the primary military strategy of a Bachmann presidency.

I know that criticizing Michele Bachmann for her political views, much less her off-the-cuff views as expressed in a town hall meeting at the Waverly Pizza Ranch, is like shooting fish in a barrel. But yooooo, THAT FISH IS FUCKING RACIST AND HOMOPHOBIC AS HELL! (Thanks for the tip, Kate.)

She also went on the record saying that, if she is president, she would close the US Embassy in Iran.

Guys, I have said this before, but I literally, LITERALLY, am less than a mile from her district. I have never loved a mile more in my life. Also, as mentioned before, on behalf of Minnesota, I’m sorry. We really never thought she’d get this much attention. It’s like at the holidays, when your cousin gets drunk and runs around the neighborhood naked.

I’m a lawyer, and I’ll be the first one to tell you that there are a lot of stupid and slimy lawyers in the world. It takes a lot to say that you are an embarrassment to this profession. But I don’t think I’ve ever met one with as poor an understanding of the Constitution and the basic concept of “rights” as Michele Bachmann. You, Madame Congresswoman, are an embarrassment.

I’m FROM that part of the state! I’ve BEEN to that Pizza Ranch (there are a few dozen of them in the Midwest – awesome buffet). Make no mistake, it is most definitely a ranch where pizzas are raised, grazed and eventually City Slickered into your mouth.

a few years ago, ralph reed (anyone remember him? he was like karl rove’s little karl rove- the guy who actually brought the conservative christians into the republican party. he came from georgia, and got badly tainted in the abramoff scandal) ANYHOO a few years ago he made a point about political organizing and basebuilding- he said that he would rather have “would rather have a thousand school board members than one president and no school board members. I’d rather have people affecting lives at the local level and changing America one neighborhood and one city and one state at a time than trying to make one person and one office the full repository of all of our hopes and aspirations for a better America.” and that’s where michele came from. and i’m pretty hopeful these days that the resonance machine built in the early 90s is creaking to a close and that this might be the last political cycle in which we run up against this ideology, but it takes such a long and terrible time for willful ignorance to stop wanting to push itself into everyone’s faces. also, as a sidenote, anyone who genuinely believes that getting prayer back in school is going to magically fix this country is too pathetic and scared to even argue with.

“Gay people can’t marry each other because it’s the law. Sorry guys. I really wish there was something I could do as President. You know, with regard to what the laws are.
Also, whoops, I think we’re in Iowa.”

What I love most about watching to the end of this nightmare campaign clip is how she simultaneously describes separation of church and state to government censorship WHILE quoting two out of three provisions of the first amendment.

I was talking to my aunt yesterday and she brought up a theory that with all these honestly insane people constantly being awful all the time… Jeb Bush is going to show up at the last minute and get the nomination. Words hurt, aunt of mine. Words hurt.

If she’s right, I’m out. Fuck it. I’m so sick of these assholes and the people who vote for them that I am 100 percent giving up. I’m taking my dog and my laptop and I’m out. I should start my American women seeking Canadian men dating site right now.

Isn’t only school-led prayer illegal? Kids can pray all they want to in the middle of their vocab quiz; no one can stop that. And speaking as a person that went to high school in a highly religious community, NO ONE is preventing Christian students and/or teachers from ramming their beliefs down other people’s throats, so her whole spiel about prayer in school is highly unsettling to me.

Also also also, I hate that she tries to sneak “When we had prayer in schools, we didn’t have all the problems that we have in the school systems today.” Could it possibly be that schools were better funded or better managed in previous generations? Or were all those prayers leading to new schools being built and teachers earning a living wage back in the good old days?

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